by Hugo Silva

Created on: October 27, 2009

Good music is hard to come by and even harder to define. What makes good music after all? Is it the catchy tune? Or is it the singing? Good music is made by talented musicians. Those musicians who write and compose their own songs, but not all of them; to me at least, talented musicians are the ones who when they are writing their lyrics, have some depth on those lyrics, not just some random sentences put together that may sound good, like many so called musicians do these days.

Unfortunately nowadays music is something too commercial to be evaluated. Of course that the really good artists are really good, and not because they get an MTV award, since most of the times that doesn't really mean that they are all that good. It probably means that they have squealing teenagers buying their albums. But keep this in mind, how many of today's artists will be remember 10 years from now? I'm 25 years old, and I listen to bands and artists that have been around for longer than I have. Mostly heavy metal bands and hard rockers, but also I listen to Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana. Simply two of the greatest guitarists ever born, and with my age I should be listening to some of those emo bands that are so popular with today's society. Why does this happen? Because today's music is in general bad, and what we see is that companies, such as Disney, create music acts that aren't really made of anything. They are there just to sell some records to kids, they don't really teach them anything, not even to listen to good music.

To me as a musician it's frustrating to see this sort of thing happen; even in my own country we have this. We have a TV network creating bands and artists with no musical talent whatsoever, and selling millions of records filled with nothing.

Now, to make good music you don't really need to have some sort of special ability nor go to a special college. You have to instruct yourself and listen to good or very good music. Check out the best of the best, not the best of the MTV Music Awards or something like that. Focus on record shops who have artists that you don't see on TV, and that probably you've never even heard of. Chances are you'll find the best right there.

Good music is made by talented people, not by the TV or by million dollar corporations, good music is made by musicians who have been around the block a few times, or by new musicians who know the ones who paved the way for them, no matter what kind of music they are making.

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